Nana Debrah Amanor, Suhum Municipal Chief Farmer, has called on traditional authorities to help educate cocoa farmers, to allow cocoa trees attacked by the swollen shoot disease, to be cut down and replanted.

Nana Amanor stated that the affected farmers would be adequately compensated by government if they agreed for the trees to be cut down and replanted. The Municipal Chief Farmer made the call when he addressed a meeting of farmers within the Suhum Municipality at Nfranor, to educate them on the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD), among other issues.

Other prominent cocoa farmers delivered lectures on the rehabilitation of cocoa farms, child labour, CSSVD Control, and sale and application of fertilizers. Nana Amanor noted that if affected cocoa trees were not cut down, the disease could infest other farms and the newly planted trees in their environs infected, saying, a situation which could reduce the national yield.

The Chief Farmer said poor fermentation and drying of cocoa beans were negatively affecting the quality of the country’s cocoa on the world market, and that: “If the trend is not changed, Ghana’s cocoa beans will lose its value on the world market”.